Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India • Hacker News Board

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#21

Post by R0b0t1 » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 11:45 PM UTC

dudul wrote: post #15

aplummer wrote: post #5

It’s interesting comparing this to Australia / NZs cultural career issue, “tall poppy syndrome” [1]. People really need to be coached to even say a personal achievement let alone sell it when apply for jobs. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

I had never heard of this syndrome! I think it can be found in Europe as well. The post was really illuminating. I don't know the Indian culture very well, but now I can understand why sometimes Indian resumes are so lengthy, difficult to parse, and essentially filled with air.

It has been quantified as well, there was research I found at one point showing lower educational attainment and worse life outcome despite IQ for gifted students if they weren't placed in accelerated programs.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#22

Post by sarmasamosarma » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 11:46 PM UTC

Being cheap and unethical is certainly part of the Indian culture. Whenever I was haggled in price for something it was an Indian. If I’m getting spam phone calls it’s the Indian on the other end. Do the most likely people that can bother doing this for a t-shirt are probably Indians. And look, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a part of the culture and the only way prosper in that society. It’s a shame that the West is too politically correct and DigitalOcean can’t say that they won’t ship t-shirts to India and eliminate the issue.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#23

Post by userbinator » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 11:48 PM UTC

IMHO calling it "Hacktoberfest" and not expecting a Jugaad flood seems rather naive of DO.

That said, a very similar culture exists in China and the Asian subcontinent (with the exception of Japan and possibly the Koreas), in particular SE Asia, so I wouldn't say it's specific to India.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#24

Post by userbinator » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 11:52 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #18

searchableguy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the obsession with certificates interesting. One of my past school used to hand them out like candies. It costs like a dollar for 10 and made everyone happy. Same with trophies and medals. After some questioning and feedback from a lot of people indirectly, I concluded that it's one of the best investment any school can make. It results in lot of good PR, recognition, talks, feel good, etc. It's useful to targ…

That's interesting because I've always found someone being "certified" for e.g. Microsoft something is a huge turnoff for hiring.

Agreed -- and an especially big turnoff is a "cert collector", most of which have done the absolute minimum required to get each of them, i.e. mostly rote memorisation. It's a very Quantity over Quality mindset.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#25

Post by Waterluvian » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 11:54 PM UTC

gautamcgoel wrote: post #20

I am Indian-American, and while I cannot comment much about the culture of Indians in India, I can comment a bit about the culture of Indian-Americans, especially second-gen Indian Americans like myself. Many of my Indian-American classmates exhibit the behaviors described in this article. For example, in my high school (a magnet program for gifted students), there were several Indian-American students, many of whom…

Does cheating work or are there a bunch of horrible doctors out there?

How did they not get filtered out during residency?

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#26

Post by monksy » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 11:58 PM UTC

ssivark wrote: post #10

I’ll duplicate a comment I made on another thread today. This has less to do with India, and more about what happens when there’s no prior culture of open source , to balance against the willingness to “hustle”. The fact that a lot of these PRs might originate in India is only relevant insofar as there are a lot of people willing to hustle, and don’t have much open source experience to understand the culture and the…

I'm not sure if you get it. India has a lot of people, some terrible infrastructure, has high amounts of competition, and the idea of craftsmanship is incredibly rare.

Their value for life is much lower. There's just too many people. The idea of a pedestrian lights is a tourist thing. They don't pay attention to it. Have 8 rows of cars on the road per each side? How do you cross? You just walk across it during traffic. (I'm not even joking.. I've done it) (Another thing.. traffic is extremely chaotic and dagerous.. lines on the road have no meaning there) Extremely poor and begging with a Competition: Theres little to no social support from the government. Also, the families are hyper aggressive in getting their kids to succeed. This is shown in the marriages and determination of what their kids will do for work.

Craftsmanship: they produce quite a lot in that country. They're also having to deal with a market that won't support luxury goods. (Ok Goa can.. but Goa isn't buying domestically for that.. they're not buying their employees Tata motors cars, they're buying Mercedes SUVs)

You could never honestly convince me that they're not entrepreneurial. They are very much. There are aspects I love about it and there are parts that make me sick.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#27

Post by aviraldg » Sat, Oct 03, 2020, 12:04 AM UTC

gautamcgoel wrote: post #20

I am Indian-American, and while I cannot comment much about the culture of Indians in India, I can comment a bit about the culture of Indian-Americans, especially second-gen Indian Americans like myself. Many of my Indian-American classmates exhibit the behaviors described in this article. For example, in my high school (a magnet program for gifted students), there were several Indian-American students, many of whom…

Why are you so quick to blame "backwards attitudes" when this behaviour is simply to meant to compensate for discrimination against Asians in college admissions? (https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-many-sins-...)

Asians with far better scores are deemed to be less worthy due to "uninteresting personalities" than others far less qualified.

I don't think it's difficult to understand why the children of people motivated enough to emigrate for better opportunities would themselves be ambitious and would want to establish themselves with stable, high performing careers (having almost no generational wealth to fall back on.)

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#28

Post by meritganset » Sat, Oct 03, 2020, 12:04 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #25

gautamcgoel wrote: post #20

I am Indian-American, and while I cannot comment much about the culture of Indians in India, I can comment a bit about the culture of Indian-Americans, especially second-gen Indian Americans like myself. Many of my Indian-American classmates exhibit the behaviors described in this article. For example, in my high school (a magnet program for gifted students), there were several Indian-American students, many of whom…

Does cheating work or are there a bunch of horrible doctors out there? How did they not get filtered out during residency?

To answer your first two questions: yes and yes.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#29

Post by gautamcgoel » Sat, Oct 03, 2020, 12:08 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #25

gautamcgoel wrote: post #20

I am Indian-American, and while I cannot comment much about the culture of Indians in India, I can comment a bit about the culture of Indian-Americans, especially second-gen Indian Americans like myself. Many of my Indian-American classmates exhibit the behaviors described in this article. For example, in my high school (a magnet program for gifted students), there were several Indian-American students, many of whom…

Does cheating work or are there a bunch of horrible doctors out there? How did they not get filtered out during residency?

I'm talking about cheating in high school. It worked in terms of college admissions (presumably these students cheated in college to get into med school, but I can't speak to that with certainty).

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#30

Post by gautamcgoel » Sat, Oct 03, 2020, 12:10 AM UTC

aviraldg wrote: post #27

gautamcgoel wrote: post #20

I am Indian-American, and while I cannot comment much about the culture of Indians in India, I can comment a bit about the culture of Indian-Americans, especially second-gen Indian Americans like myself. Many of my Indian-American classmates exhibit the behaviors described in this article. For example, in my high school (a magnet program for gifted students), there were several Indian-American students, many of whom…

Why are you so quick to blame "backwards attitudes" when this behaviour is simply to meant to compensate for discrimination against Asians in college admissions? ( https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-many-sins-... ) Asians with far better scores are deemed to be less worthy due to "uninteresting personalities" than others far less qualified. I don't think it's difficult to understand why the children of…

I think it's backwards to believe that the measure of your life is how prestigious a college you went to, or how much money you make, especially if these goals lead you to cheat and lie to advance.